What had he just said about a fool and money?

Lang shook his head. "Tell me where to meet you so I can look it over and the cash is yours. As soon as I can get it out of an ATM."

Klaus looked puzzled, then brightened. "ATM? Here we have Bankomat. Bring it to my shop in the morning. With two thousand dollars, you will have become one of my customers I know well."

Lang went to his room with the vision of Klaus hunched over a Xerox machine all night.

As the waiter deftly snatched the cloth from the table Lang and Klaus had vacated, he stopped and removed an object not much larger than a penny from the bottom of the table. He walked to the men's room and opened the door to the sole stall. Inside was a man who exchanged a wad of kroner for the thing from under the table.

V.

A Few Minutes Later

Once in his room, Lang used his BlackBerry to call Gurt. Ostensibly, he was calling to make sure she and the little boy were keeping on the move. He really wanted to speak to his son. He had thought he had experienced Loneliness before but never had he suffered an absence as he did being away from little Manfred. Surely, he told himself, he would finish his business here in Prague in time to be home tomorrow night. His conversation might well be picked up by a tap on Echelon, but whoever wanted him out of the way probably already knew he was in the Czech Republic.

"Lang?" Gurt could have been in the next room, not an ocean and half a continent away.

"We are weary of this all the time moving. I have decided to visit Manfred's Grossvater"

Grandfather, Gerhardt Fuchs, a former East German official and the subject of Lang's only venture into Soviet territory while with the agency. Few people knew Fuchs was now living in the resort town of Baden-Baden in the Black Forest. Gurt, also aware of Echelon and the possibility of its being compromised, didn't mention the location.

"Do you need to? I was just getting acquainted with my son."

Lang regretted the words as soon as he had spoken them. If anyone was qualified to gauge how safe remaining in Atlanta was, Gurt was that person.

"Our son," Gurt corrected. "It is more without danger if we leave."

How do you argue with that?

"Let me speak to him."

Manfred gave a thorough description of his exploits with Grumps and his latest visit to the local International House of Pancakes, a place the child equated with heaven itself Lang had to admire his mother's courage in taking an active three-year-old to a place where containers of sticky, multicolored syrup were not only within reach but easily opened as well. As the child stopped for breath in his excited narrative, Lang was convinced his son was intelligent and mature beyond his years, an observation which uniformly drew his skepticism when voiced by other parents. The inconsistency never occurred to him.

Gurt took the phone back from a reluctant Manfred. "We were having lunch with Uncle Fancy when you called."

Uncle Fancy. The conjunction of the hard and soft consonants of the priest's name defeated the three-year-old tongue, hence the sobriquet, one Francis bore with good humor.

"Put him on."

"On what?"

Gurt's Teutonically literal mind and her difficulty with the American idiom was both one of her most endearing and annoying qualities.

"Let me speak to him."

"How's my favorite heretic?" Francis's bass boomed through the ether.

"Fine," Lang replied. "I hope to be home soon. I need your advice."

"Tell me you've seen the light, Paul on the road to Damascus. Veritas praevalebit"

"More like Demosthenes holding the light in search of a single honest man. Don't fire up the incense yet. The truth I'm looking for is more church history than religious… I think."

"You know I'm available anytime – particularly if single malt scotch is involved." He became serious. "I've learned not to ask, but Gurt really believes she and the child are in some sort of danger."

It was an invitation to explain. Doing so might well expose the priest to the same people who had employed Baldy and Co.

Lang said nothing.

Francis began again. "You might be interested to know I've been summoned to Rome for a convocation of African and African American priests. Church business, but I thought you and Gurt, Manfred, too, for that matter, might want to come along. As well as you know the city…"

"Thanks but no, not at the moment. Gurt's leaving to visit with her father for a few days."

"Perfect! That leaves you free to come along. I think she might trust me with your behavior."

Lang didn't want to hurt his friend's feelings, but he couldn't very well explain why he didn't have time for optional travel. "I'm pretty busy right now, Francis. We can talk about it when I get back, probably tomorrow."

Francis didn't do so well hiding disappointment. "It's not for another week. Perhaps then."

Lang had gotten what he sought: affirmation the priest was going to be available to answer questions about James the Just, reputed brother of Jesus. "Let's hope. Now, let me speak to Gurt again."

The additional conversation did little but make him aware of the hole in his life that was the absence from Manfred and Gurt. He could not remember ever being so impatient to get home. He fell asleep almost immediately after terminating the call, but not before mentally marking the toy store he had passed. There were a number of items in the window that might interest an exceptional three- year-old.

VI.

Josefska

Mala Strana

Prague

0812

The Next Morning

Old Town Square was empty of yesterday's tourists. Anyone following Lang would have been obvious. The sole traffic on the Charles Bridge was a woman with a head scarf on a bicycle, its handlebar basket full of baguettes that still had a freshly baked aroma.

Ignoring leg muscles still in denial from yesterday's excursion, Lang took a circuitous route to the bookseller's shop. The neighborhood was just awakening to the new day. A few merchants were rolling up steel mesh blinds as restauranteurs swept already spotless sidewalks. A woman exited from somewhere down the row of Baroque buildings, pushing a pram. No Baldy. Unwilling to take unnecessary risks, Lang took another lap around the block, this time trying not to be obvious as he scanned windows and doorways.

He finally stopped in front of Klaus's business, taking a final glance left and right. Pushing a button beside the door, Lang was rewarded with the sound of pealing bells from within. A minute passed, then another. Lang tried again with the same lack of result. He took a step back and looked at the upper-story windows. European shopkeepers frequently lived above their stores. Perhaps the old man was still upstairs, unable to hear.

More from frustration than because he expected success, he used the head of his cane to rap on the door. To his surprise, it swung open a couple of inches.

Klaus had not impressed him as a careless man, the sort who might forget to lock up. Holding the cane in his left hand, Lang used it to push the door wide, his right hand on the butt of the Browning in the small of his back.

The only available light was that coming through the shop's filthy display window, a light filtered by an accumulation of dust. He could make out silhouettes: a table, a counter running the length of one wall, but little else. His left hand searched the wall until he found a switch. The single overhead bulb did little more than chase the pervasive shadows into corners where they waited sullenly. Startled, Lang snatched the Browning up only to grin sheepishly at his own reflection in a dozen or so old-fashioned glass bookcases, each crammed with leather-backed tomes. The room had an overlaying musty smell of prolonged disuse. But there was something else, too, an odor that was familiar yet not quite remembered clearly enough to identify.